Fire protection systems presently in use either necessitate installation at the time that a residence or other housing unit is being built, or would require substantial repair or reconstruction when installed in an existing dwelling. Numerous improvements have been devised in the individual components of such systems, such as, automatically controlled on-off sprinkler heads and sensing devices to sense the temperature and to regulate the delivery of water to the sprinkler heads. However, as sprinkling systems have become increasingly complex combined with the attendant costs of installation, portable fire extinguishers have become increasingly popular because of their reduced costs. This is particularly true in the case of mobile homes and campers, since at the present time, self-contained fire protection systems have not been available which can be installed in existing mobile homes. Indeed, I am not aware of any self-contained fire protection system which is now commercially available as original equipment for mobile homes or travel trailers. On the other hand, fire protection systems for permanent homes or residences required considerable skill and expertise by professional or contract labor in the installation of such systems. The practice has been to run any plumbing through the interior or insulating space behind the walls into individual sprinkler heads which are flush-mounted either in the walls or ceiling surfaces. Thus, systems presently available have not lent themselves well for installation as a part of the mass or volume production of mobile homes or other recreational vehicles. Yet the danger of fires is equally as great in such dwellings as in residential homes.
It is therefore highly desirable to provide a self-contained fire protection system which can be connected to the domestic water supply for a mobile home, is fully automatic in controlling the activation and deactivation of sprinkler heads located in the system so that selected heads may be activated only for the time interval required to completely extinguish the fire, and further provides the necessary interlocking control for the fuel and power sources into the mobile home so as to automatically deactivate such sources when a fire is in progress but nevertheless furnish the necessary power to trigger an alarm. In addition, it is important that such a system be conformable for installation into new as well as existing mobile homes or other dwellings by anyone without necessity of installing same as a permanent fixture or otherwise modifying the structure of the dwelllng; in other words, to provide a self-contained or stand-alone system which can be made available in kit form and installed with a minimum of time and labor required.
Representative patents which show permanent or built-in fire protection systems for dwellings are U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,866,253 to Donahue, 231,715 to Grinell and 1,308,974 to Arvtinz. For example, Donahue discloses a sprinkler system having automatic sprinkler heads activated by the melting of a fusible link and where the system is connected both to an alarm circuit and a gas shut-off valve. Fully automatic on-off sprinkler heads have also been designed and which are specifically adapted to be mounted in the wall or ceiling of a building so that in response to a certain temperature level the head will open to direct a spray of water into a room or space and to close upon a predetermined drop in temperature. Representative U.S. Pat. Nos. are to W. Z. Johnson 3,802,510 and 3,877,527. Representative of the patents which employ automatic shut-off valves for gas supply as well as to activate an alarm circuit in response to a predetermined rise in temperature are Miller U.S. Pat. No. 996,110, Currivan U.S. Pat. No. 1,620,876 and Neilson U.S. Pat. No. 3,473,544.